I was just a man taking pictures of trees he was glad to own. I discovered it on a Tuesday morning in late March. I had gone out early to walk the fence line. I do this a few times a year, mostly after winter. Ice and fallen branches can damage the wire in places. It is routine maintenance, nothing dramatic. I came around the eastern edge of the property and stopped walking. The trees were gone.
Not all of them, but 11 of the mature trees along my eastern boundary. The birch and maple I had photographed just 5 months earlier had been cut down. Clean cuts, chainsaw work. The stumps were fresh. The sawdust was still pale, not yet darkened by weather. Some of the stumps still had sap seeping from the grain.
I stood there for a long time. I did not shout. I did not run to the varner property. I stood and I looked and I tried to understand what I was seeing. The logs had been cut into sections and removed. Someone had taken the wood. The brush had been dragged off to the side and piled loosely near the fence. Whoever did this had worked quickly and had tried to clean up after themselves.
Not out of guilt, I think, out of habit. I walked to the fence line itself. The fence, a simple four strand barbed wire which was intact. No one had cut it or moved it. But when I looked at the stumps relative to the fence, something stood out immediately. Every stump was on my side of the fence, not near the line, not ambiguous, clearly on my side.
The nearest stump was roughly 6 feet inside my property. The furthest was perhaps 18 ft in. There was no reasonable interpretation that put those trees on the varner side. None. I pulled out my phone and called my neighbor Dale, who owns the parcel to my north. He is a retired county surveyor. I trust his eye. He came over within the hour.
He walked the line with me. He looked at the stumps. He looked at the fence. He pulled out a worn measuring tape he keeps in his truck and checked two reference points he apparently still remembers from when this area was surveyed years ago. He looked at me and said, “Those trees were yours.” He said it plainly, the way a man says something that does not require debate.
I thanked him and asked him to write down what he saw. He did it right there standing in the field in a small notebook he keeps in his jacket. Date, time, his observations, his reference measurements. He signed it. That was the first document. I went back inside and I did not call the Varners. I did not go to their door.
I had already decided in those first calm minutes that I was not going to handle this with a conversation. I had handled things with conversations before in my life. I knew how that went with certain kinds of people. They apologized just enough. They offer nothing real. Time passes. Nothing changes. These trees could not grow back.
Whatever was said at a fence line would not change that. So, I was not interested in a conversation. I was interested in a record. The first call I made was to my county extension office. I know that sounds unusual. Most people would call a lawyer first, but I had a specific reason. I wanted to establish the value of what was taken before I did anything else.
Timber trespass, which is what this was, is calculated in part by the value of the trees themselves. In many states, the law allows for double or triple damages when timber is cut without permission. But you need a baseline number. You need someone qualified to provide it. The extension office gave me the name of a certified arborist who did rural property assessments in the county.
